Last Week Former District Governor Andy Baum spoke on the requirements and the process for obtaining project grants from RI or the District. Fundable projects may be local, domestic or international and may involve several clubs. To become eligible for District funds a club should ordinarily have donated $50.00 per capita.

Projects are favored that promise sustainability and success, that have strong leadership and have access to the relevant expertise.

RI maintains a “terms and conditions” statement to be consul-ted by clubs requesting support. Clubs applying for funds from the District or RI should go to www.rotary.org, which contains all the information needed to apply. The tab “explore grants” is of particular interest. Applications to RI must be re-viewed and seconded by the District. The District favors direct, active involvement by a club or clubs rather than mere financial assistance.

“Global grants,” which normally exceed $30,000, support projects in which clubs abroad are active partners. It is crucial that all participating clubs be “certified” by RI, that is, be in good standing. In our club, Barry Thompson is well-informed on the application requirements.

In March 2009 the Fed started buying US bonds by placing an IOU with the US Treasury, thus monetizing the debt. The IOU’s (Quantitave Easing, “QE”) are now $3T, and has set in motion a global currency war. The QE risks are run away inflation or callaps of the US $ as a global reserve currency. This could cause a financial collapse much worse than 2008-9. Steve Emerickk suggests that we should consider investing part of our IRA in rare tangible assets as a hed-ge against a US financial crisis. Steve represents Asset Strategies Internatio-nal, ASI. One can buy, sell, and store rare assets by internet using ASI Pre-cious Metals Direct. The storage can be off shore. Rare tangible assets can be bullion coins and bars (in Global Gold Swiss Storage), gold or silver money, numismatics, offshore real estate, Perth mint certificates, and/or rare stamps through Stanley Gibbons Ltd ( with stor-age in Chanel Islands Guerney and Jer-sey plus Hong Kong and Singapo-re). Steve also recommends 90% silver US dimes, quarters, and half $’s minted before 1965 in case the banks and credit cards are shut down. Steve Emerick can be contacted at seme-rick@assetstrategies.com.

The Leonardtown, MD Rotary Club is building 3 dimensional reefs out of concrete blocks and 1 foot balls (with wholes) to increase the oyster population in the Chesapeake Bay. The new reefs are located in a pro-tected part of the St Mary’s Ri-ver. M & F oysters produce millions of “spat” offspring in a lab. In three months the spat is the size of a quarter and are transferred on an oyster shell to the artificial reef. The higher they get on the reef the more algae (and more water current) the bigger they get. The oysters float out into the Bay. Each oyster filters 55 lb of water a day and releases nitro-gen thereby cleaning up the Bay. The St. Mary’s County OYSTER FESTIVAL is on Oct 19 & 20. For more info call 301-863-5015 or go to www.usoysterfest.com